Anything for Billy: A Novel

I'm surprised at some of the negative posts. I found this a fun and casual look at Billy The Kid. Easy to read with its smooth, casual, 1st person narrative. McMurtry creates vivid realistic characters without making them resemble the silly wooden, macho characters that fill most Louis L'Amour novels.

This book was so wonderful I doubt I can decribe it. It's about Billy the Kid, Benjamen Sippy and Joe Lovelady. Sippy and Joe are Billy's proctectors and companions. My favorite charictor is Katie Garza. Billy was a little rough for me, but, then again, he was a bit diffrent when he died. Billy's death shocked me, and not all deaths do. What shocked me was not that he died, as anyone who has read the book will know, but HOW he died. This is a great book, that no one should pass up. -A McMurtry Fan

It may be an ode to dime novels, the story is epic drama in the style of Sergio Leone, or possibly Bud Spencer and Terrence Hill, with a touch of distance and humour provided by the narrator, writing down the story in a dry voice. Mr. Benjamin Sippy from Philadelphia is a big fan of Western dime novels. When his supply slows down, he first starts cranking them out himself - then, when it stops completely, he jumps on the first train west and falls in with a young kid named Billy Bone. Along for the ride, he witnesses and documents Billy's short but wild career in fame, love and death. Many colourful characters complete the setting - Joe Lovelady, the cowboy; Katie Garza, the Mexican bandit; gunslingers, buffalo hunters and more. There may be little in the way of character development, but they all come to brilliant (if usually short) life. And there was certainly a development in the way I saw Billy. So put on that Ennio Morricone CD, grab a bottle of cheap bourbon and dig in.

I am not a big Larry McMurtry fan, but this book really pulled me. It uses very stylistic prose, reminiscent of the 19th century dime novels that made cowboys into myth. It is, in fact, fun to read. The persona is very present and we enjoy his use of language that is at once both cliche yet sounds original. In this world of the book, there are three types of people in the untamed West: gunfighters, cowboys and buffalo hunters. I suppose there are bar tenders to serve these three as well.Far from being a dime novel, however, is the darker side of the work, beginning at about the last third or so. Billy's penchance for unthinking violence catches up with him and with the alert reader as well. This is a novel about life in America today. Or about life anywhere where individuals become icons instead of people. It is easy, McMurtry seems to assert, to kill an generalization. It is more difficult to kill a person. The whole novel sets up contrasts between generalizations of people (as if they were computer icons in a war game) and individuals. So while folks are getting killed and hurt throughout the book, it is only the Romanticized wild West until a main character that we all have learned to love gets killed. Suddenly the book is about something far beyond a recreation of a cowboy dime novel. And it hurts.So while it is a delightful and fun romp through a Romanticized West, the undertones of the book hit hard. Read it and laugh, then weep.

I'm only 12 years old, and I've already read almost all of Larry McMurtrys stuff. People think I'm a little "underaged" to be reading this stuff. I don't care, I love his books, so oh well (I don't give a damn what they say). I would DEFINATELY recommend this book, becasue it was interesting, but not always proper like the real world.